June 16 2000

on the airoff the press

New film explores the lives of children in gay families

by John Graves

On June 13, Cleveland's WVIZ Channel 25 aired the one-hour special Our House: A Very Real Documentary About Kids of Lesbian and Gay Parents.

Produced by the Independent Television Service, Our House takes a look at five lesbian and gay families and the lives of the children who grew up in them. Filmmaker Meema Spadola worked with the international organization COLAGE, Children of Lesbians and Gays, to interview nearly 300 LGBT families across the nation before selecting the five families featured in the documentary.

Spadola made her final selections from a diverse group, African-American, Latino and white, upscale and working class, urban, suburban and rural, Mormon, Christian, and Jewish; to represent the most realistic crosssection of our community.

Spadola, who previously produced the HBO documentaries Breasts: Our Most Private Parts and Private Dicks: Men Exposed, grew up in a lesbian family herself.

"I grew up in a small town in Maine, and in 1980, when I was ten, my mother came out as a lesbian," Spadola said. “I thought I was the only kid with a gay parent. I was too afraid to be out, and for years lied about my mom."

For a long time I've wanted to make a documentary that presents realistic portraits of sons and daughters of gay and lesbian

Showtime casts third Tales' episode

In the May 26 issue of Entertainment Weekly, Brian Raftery wrote about how cable's Showtime network has developed an "unexpected niche audience of LGBT viewers with such gay-themed productions as Amistead Maupin's More Tales of the City; Execution of Justice, the drama based on the trial of Dan White who killed gay San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor Willie Moscone; Dirty Pictures, a dramatized account of the furor raised in Cincinnati over an exhibit of the works of gay photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and the upcoming series Queer as Folk.

Although unconfirmed by the network itself, TV Guide reports it has learned that Showtime is now casting for the third installment of Maupin's Tales of The City series.

"From e-mails and letters, we have a substantial gay viewership, and they tell us it's because of the gay-oriented programs," Showtime vice president for original programming Mark Zakarin told Raftery. "It's better for us to have programming that is number one on the list of gay [viewers] than it is for us to have the number-12 show on the list of everyone. We have the freedom in premium television of being able to work without worrying about what Jerry Falwell is going to think."

According to Raftery, "As far as Showtime is concerned, they're here, they're queer— get used to it."

parents," she continued. "My hope is that Early women filmmakers profiled

kids who believe they're alone will have the chance to turn on the TV and see kids like themselves. In profiling a diverse range of families, I hope that viewers will see that our families are truly everywhere. I look forward to Our House starting conversations all over the country."

With that said, one must wonder once again why WVIZ aired the program so late at night, at 11:30 pm. Surely we can delay an episode of one of those old sawhorses like Antiques Roadshow once in a while then maybe this show could have reached its intended audience, and children of LGBT parents in our area might not feel like they're "the only ones in the whole world."

New families in 'Newsweek'

Following up on its extensive LGBT-inclusive report on non-traditional families, the May 29 issue of Newsweek featured "Helping to Create a New Kind of Family," a "My Turn" column written by David Levinson, a gay man from Brooklyn.

In his column, Levinson talks of how, after assuming all his life that he would be childless, he is about to help a lesbian friend and her partner, who want to become parents. Under their agreement, Levinson, who says he himself still wants to live the single life, will not be named as the father on the birth certificate or have financial or parental responsibility, but will have full visitation as he sees fit. Levinson went on to say he was astonished by the reaction of his parents,

AMC, the American Movie Classics channel, is airing the documentary Reel Models: The First Women of Film, a look back at some of the pioneer women filmmakers who rose to prominence in the 1900s, '20s and '30s, before men took over and relegated them to lesser roles in the industry.

Among the filmmakers profiled is Alice: Guy-Blaché, a French filmmaker who owned a studio and, in the 1900s, made one film about a gay gold miner and another about cross-dressing cops.

A new low in musical gaybashing

Remember the furor that Axl Rose of Guns 'n' Roses generated with some homophobic remarks he made several years ago? Well, there's a new proud-to-be-a-bigot on the block.

Writing for Kansas City's Pitchweekly, Andrew Miller reports that rapper Eminem has reached a new low in homophobia with the lyrics, "My words are like a dagger with a jagged edge that'll stab you in the head, whether you're a fag or lez... Hate fags? The answer's yes," in his new release "Criminal."

"The Marshall Mathers LP, the sophomore effort from Michigan-by-way-of-Missouri native Eminem, ranks among the year's best from a musical standpoint," writes Miller. But, "It's quite possibly the most potentially offensive major-label, soon-to-be-platinum record ever to be released."

who said they couldn't wait to be grandparThe Lady Chablis returns to Aiken

ents when he told them of his decision.

Gielgud 'inned'

The world lost a great actor when Sir John Gielgud died recently, but of all the mainstream press stories I read, including an extensive AP write-up published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, only USA Today and People magazine mentioned that he was gay and had a long term partner of the past years, Martin Hensler, who preceded him in death

last year.

If left out deliberately, it's a sign of a subtle form homophobia—not wanting to "sully" the reputation of a venerated actor, as if being gay were something to be ashamed of or would "detract" from the respect he earned as an actor.

'Will and Grace' marathon set

NBC will air marathon of six episodes of its hit gay-themed sitcom Will and Grace on July 18. Viewers can vote for choices as to which episodes get aired that night by going to the NBC web site.

Augusta Chronicle reporter Margaret N. O'Shea wrote of a recent performance by The Lady Chablis, "the flamboyant female impersonator made famous in the book and movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, "at Marlboro Station, a gay nightclub in Aiken, S.C., across the border from Augusta, Ga.

Aiken is the same town where Chablis was thrown in jail for failing to appear in court for a number of traffic offenses in February 1999, because she was expecting an attorney to handle the fines.

O'Shea wrote that, at the time of her arrest, Chablis' appearance in the news media was less than flattering, to which The Lady quipped, "I was trying to go incognegro."

This time in Aiken, Chablis told O'Shea, "Anybody that wants to see me like I really am will have to pay to get in the door. You want the real me, come see me Friday night, Girl."

"And you can tell the Aiken police to relax, I won't be driving," Chablis added.

Born Benjamin Edward Knox in Quincy, Fla., 43 years ago, The Lady Chablis her legal name told O'Shea that he realized at an early age that neither the name nor the gender fit and that she began wearing women's clothes when she was 14, and she began performing at 17.

O'Shea, who insisted on calling Chablis "he" throughout the story, wrote, "A relatively small-town venue like Marlboro Station wouldn't stand a chance of getting The Lady Chablis to perform, and manager Melinda Kitchings is ecstatic that he agreed to do it."

Chablis told O'Shea, "I'm not doing it for the money, I'm doing it because it's Aiken. I figured that I owed the people of Aiken a show after all that free publicity the last time I was there."

Sun columnist is at it again

"Hey, enough already about gay rights and gay issues" screams the headline for the latest column by the Sun papers' resident homophobe, Powell Caesar.

In his column, which ran in all 17 of the Cleveland-suburban "Sun" weeklies, Caesar complains, "I've come to the conclusion that the gay lesbian and transgender crowd will give no peace until 'straights' cave in to their demands of unwavering acceptance of their lifestyles... The gay, lesbian and transgendered crowd can't seem to get it through their collective heads that their orientation is not a paramount issue in the lives of straights. The majority of us could give two hoots about their lifestyle and persuasions."

I don't think he was being inclusive here— I think he included transgendered in an attempt to shock his readers even more, since

lesbian and gay don't seem to be scary enough to arouse the citizenry into driving us back into the closet.

In January, Caesar wrote that LGBT activists are trying to "pee in the face" of good solid citizens like himself, by trying to educate Americans about our people and our struggle to achieve full civil rights.

Well Mr. Caesar, you ought to remember the time a majority of white people felt that way about our brothers and sisters who continue to fight for the civil rights of those of us of African-American descent. Your thinking in this matter is the same as theirs.

Do you wish that struggle would go back in the closet? Do you wish African-American civil rights advocates would just go away and leave whites in peace to continue to discriminate? I think not.

You say "enough already," but you keep bringing the subject up. As the Constitution guarantees, you've stated how you feel, and how you would like to believe most Americans think. Most of those straight Americans are learning they have a loved one who is lesbian, gay bisexual or transgendered, and how homophobia hurts those loved ones— and they are finding out they love them enough to stand up for them.

Now, Mr. Caesar, shut up already. To paraphrase that oft-quoted line, we are here, we are queer and we're not going away-get used to it.

John Graves is the producer and host of Gaywaves, an LGBT public affairs show on Cleveland's WRUW 91.1 FM Fridays at 7 pm, and at http://radio.cwru.edu. Dave Haskell, Jim McGrattan and Kim Jones also contribute to this column.

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